On nationalism and my inability to understand it

Nationalism is just one of those things I really don't get, possibly because I've moved around a lot and seen a lot of the world for myself. Sure, loving the place you're in is a good thing, and don't let me rain on your parade, but there comes a point where I just stare blankly and go "...huh?".
T and I were skype-ing about the Senkaku islands and the beef that's going on with China and Taiwan. Swedish newspapers have said that it might even come down to war, so I asked him about it. He said that people are idiots, and what with North Korea being bat-shit crazy and the general region being a bit unstable, no-one really liking Japan and all, that it might happen. Then again, Japan being in an alliance with the US does speak for it not happening, since a war in East Asia is hardly what the US needs right now, but the thought is still obviously scary.


The irony of the choice of song is hilarious. Apparently this is a North Korean video stating that "hey you guys, if we only nuke the shit out of the USA, we can all live in peace and harmony!". We had a collective moment of facepalming.

War freaks me out, so I told him that if shit goes down, he should come here to Sweden and we'd look out for him. The reply I got was "Thank you. You guys are really kind. But it's fine, I've already decided to share my country's fate no matter what." The wording left me staring dumbstruck at my screen. In the possible choice between life and death, safety or the insecurity that war, and if worse comes to worst, an invasion of some sort would bring, there are people who would stick around, despite having the chance to leave, for their country? Not family or anything (to me) understandable, but country alone? Now T has a habit of saying some weird shit sometimes, but I was a little shocked how anyone's thought process could work like that. To me, a country is a piece of land inhabited my people, governed (hopefully) to the best of their ability. That's it. It's just a place you live that has certain rules of conduct. If war were to come to where I was staying, I'd grab those important to me and get the hell out of dodge. I have no feelings of national pride towards any place I've ever lived, because they're just that - places. The difference between T and I is that T's been raised on the Japanese countryside, and hasn't really lived anyplace else. He's traveled some, but still has ideas that I don't really understand. He'll occasionally share in the subtle racist undertones that run through Japan and is mostly targeted at South Korea (although he's been pleasantly surprised to learn that not all young people in Europe do drugs and party like crazy, but was equally disappointed when I told him of our 40 hour work weeks, stating that it was a culture that would make people lazy), and it's all just completely foreign to me.

T's a good guy - my dad brought me up to understand the difference between who a person is and what he does, but like Pony says, he'll probably benefit from my cracking his skull a bit when I'm there, introducing him to new things and teaching him about different cultures in the same way he'll be able to teach me about his own. Foreign policies and conflicts that run generations deep are a mess to me, and thinking that I'd be able to understand the situation through some light reading is naive. All I know is that from my experience, too much of a love for an inanimate object such as a piece of ground will only ever lead to strife and unhappiness. While T is quite adamant about letting the islands remain Japanese, he has a great love for the earth itself, and a will to discover more about it. That in and of itself is, to me, a great first step in letting go of ingrained ideas about petty conflicts and seeing a bigger picture. While I know I can't do much about the East Asian conflict, I have a chance of influencing someone to be more tolerant, and hopefully in turn, it'll spread.


And yes, while I'm fully aware that this video is rather heavy-handed on the Japanese spectacularly solving every single world crisis, the message in the lyrics as well as the note in the video is something we should all be able to get behind.